Daffodils by the Sea
by elishajk
Summary: Shizuru x Natsuki.  AU/OOC.  "And even in my dreams I shake with the fear that you've been swept away by the rhythm of the waves I whisper in your ears."


**Disclaimer: All characters owned by Sunrise, except the **_**oyaji**_**. **

_Such a harsh town  
Yet so easily  
It's never been much  
In front of me  
Keep quiet  
Keep quiet  
Keep quiet_

_Let's consider a change of scenery  
It's getting boring by the sea  
Pictures  
Pictures  
Pictures_

_It's Getting Boring by the Sea - Blood Red Shoes_

Natsuki stood on the terrace overlooking the –could you even call it an alley? –narrow strip of asphalt that lay between her apartment and yet another complex across the way. Clotheslines strung the gap like Christmas lights, connecting buildings so densely packed that each seemed to be tightly pressed to the next. In her tiny niche, she far from spent her nights alone. The clanging of pots, yells and tussles, raucous lovemaking sounds, had all become consolation to her within her so-called luxury room, where apparently the walls were just as tenuous.

The blaring smog warning had awoken her on this early morning, alerting her to a danger incapable of being seen. Or was it the seaward foghorns? The steam whistle of ships coming into port? If Tokyo never slept, it was the fluttering of ships in Yokohama Bay that kept it awake. A place of comings and goings, never a place of rest, Yokohama was famous for its large port, an industrialized fishing village really. Just between the couple of feet that the buildings allowed for vision, Natsuki could barely make out the grainy blue of the sea, where tiny white waves punctuated the smooth surface like wrinkles in a sheet.

So much for the promised view of the ocean.

The sun barely crowned the building tops, and as it stood she had failed her mental task of finding out where the sound of the smog sirens was coming from. She could find no speakers, nor any bells amidst the cracking and peeling paint of the buildings, yet the alarm continued to drone on like an old kindly elephant. Most people were accustomed to ignoring the sound, only passively registering it, though Natsuki could not help but think it was the workings of some mysterious underground organization or some alien communications system. To her, the invisible source of the sound was more disturbing than her neighbors' loud afternoon sex. Resigning it all to imagination, to modern sorcery and trickery, she shuffled in through the sliding door and out of the cold.

Quietly shutting the door behind her, she turned to face the damage. Above the doorway to her bedroom hung a limp, half-torn down "Happy Birthday Mai" banner, cups and bottles littered her usually sparse layout, the karaoke system still looped a bubbly Nana Kitade tune. Her typically clean hardwood floors were sprinkled with crushed chips, and spilled alcohol. Two bodies were passed out on the couch, another on the kitchen counter with a bucket of melted ice cream teetering in her hands. Natsuki eyed the precariously tipping container, lest it spill its sticky contents onto the three girls sleeping on the floor below. Natsuki sighed through her nose and shook her head at the sight, thinking for once that maybe they had partied a bit too hard.

The thought of cleaning up the mess before her only made Natsuki resent hosting this little soirée even more, even if she did enjoy herself. Two days ago she had received a rather endearing note in her mailbox, written on the back of a receipt in crayon read the plead: "Natsuki, can we please have Mai's birthday party at your place? - Mikoto." Having completely forgotten about her friend's birthday, she had grudgingly agreed.

Still standing in the doorway, Natsuki stepped lightly and made her way to the bedroom. A far cry from the chaos she had just removed herself from, her bedroom was homely yet frugal, consisting of a low kotatsu table, a futon, and a small dresser. Only slightly dusty, the room hardly had any indication of anyone living there, save for the red two-piece swimsuit that was hanging to dry over the bathroom door and an open book on the table.

The summer months had barely begun, warranting frequent beach festivals, the coming typhoon season, a generous increase in temperature, and an equally rewarding shedding of clothes of the beach denizens like herself. In her initial boredom with the season, Natsuki had first descended upon the sandy locale, eager to see the shore brimming with life for the three months out of the year that the industrious country allowed itself to relax. She had witnessed how spring would yield to the summer's gentle embrace, though it seemed that just as soon as the air grew warm and the festival lights had been put up, autumn would roll around and bring to end the festivities with a cooling wind to assuage the sorely sun-burned, the tirelessly drunk, and the broken hearted. What at once appeared in the sun as a sparkling gem in the silky sand was soon but a discarded beer bottle or an empty foil wrapper.

At present, she strongly desired to walk to the beach, as she had in the days preceding her unexpected gathering. The blue sky was now tinted a perfect shade of orange by the morning sun, the ocean folding in rhythmic morning waves, and thoughts of the night before led Natsuki to laugh a bright, morning laugh.

"Yo birthday girl! What do you say to a round of kamikaze?" Natsuki had challenged, holding up two bottle of sake in each hand

"You're on! Set it up!" Mai settled tipsily across the table from her friend, already glowing.

Natsuki clumsily poured the Daiginjo into two shot glasses and placed a pair of chopsticks across the top of each. With a drunken glint in both of their eyes, as soon as Midori's countdown reached zero, they began to furiously pound the table in seeming frustration. Mai's chopsticks toppled first, and she slammed down her shot, though certainly not her first drink, of the night, with eyes tightly shut.

Cheers and jeers from the others had led to ten more rounds, some drunken karaoke, and finally the ceremonial passing out for the night. It's a wonder we're not all dead from alcohol poisoning.

Natsuki leaned over to the dresser, rummaging for her board shorts before stuffing them into a small sand-crusted tote, next pulling her two-piece off the hanger, packing it in as well. Feeling a bit guilty about leaving her apartment in disarray for the others to clean up, she shrugged off the thought on the basis that the mess what not solely hers. She shouldered her bag and clamored out of the door, only hoping they wouldn't be too angry with her when they came around.

x

Every customer greeted Shizuru Fujino with a bow, whether they wanted to or not. The door frame of the traditional wooden seaside teahouse had been built purposely low so that guests had to lower their heads in order to enter the establishment. Scores of tea ceremony schools and tea houses, a number of corporate offices, both domestic and international, all built the same to "command respect of the Fujino," her father had smugly stated.

For this reason, the ocha-hime hardly ever recognized people by their faces, but rather by the tops of their heads. Most of the crowns she saw now were patched and white, the remnants of generations before. Her mother and father had certainly not planned to attract much of a youthful crowd. Shizuru had to mentally shake herself from time to time as she found herself admiring a particularly beautiful older woman, or imagining what her kids would look like with a man who was more pleasing than the average to look at.

She stared at the clock. Thirty minutes until my shift ends. Twenty-nine minutes until my shift ends. At eleven minutes left, she saw a particularly familiar head enter the door. Suzushiro Haruka, her blonde and busty friend from gakuen, lumbered into the teahouse. Shizuru found it amusing that she tried to enter without bowing -she wasn't too fond of Shizuru's parents-and in doing so just made it look like she was dodging a bullet or avoiding a fly. She was the only person Shizuru knew who would go to such lengths to avoid something like lowering her head, all while managing to make as much noise as possible.

"Shut it, you!" Haruka reprimanded as she approached a chuckling Shizuru at the bar. "I come to pick you up and you laugh at me? Me! I should be laughing at you for having to work in this place with a bunch of coffin dodgers for customers!"

"Well you know, you do fit right in, onibaba," Shizuru retorted, still laughing.

"Fuck this! Grab your shit we're getting out of here already."

Shizuru looked behind the bar, nodding to her co-workers to let them know she was leaving, grabbed her bag and started for the door, closely following Haruka, who looked like a mad bull with her shoulders squared and jaw set.

The little teahouse was perched right on the beach. The water was just opposite a walkway, some twenty feet away. It was sunny out and it was just starting to get crowded. Haruka slowed her pace as she reached the sand, turning around to check on her friend just as she was stepping out of her shorts, revealing a black bikini bottom.

"What to do, what to do?" She asked, hands on her hips. "It's not as if you can swim anyways. So ironic to think you're the reigning princess of this little town."

"So where are the others?"

Haruka had been expecting Shizuru to be offended, but didn't stop to think as her comment went unacknowledged. "By the pier. Reito seems to have moved on pretty quickly. He and Tate are trying to pick up on the new flock that are here on summer holiday."

It hadn't been a particularly tough break at all for Shizuru. She smiled at the news. And to think I had been worried about breaking that poor boys heart. In all honesty, she could simply no longer deny the lack of connection and intimacy between herself and her boyfriend of just over a year. They both felt they would be better off apart. Right now that was turning out to be only half a truth.

Shizuru let out a sigh. "Guess we had better leave them to it then, ne? Maybe we can do some fishing ourselves right now," she said with a grin.

Haruka lay the towels she had been carrying out on the sand, took off her sunhat, and flopped down across one of them, "Easy for you to say! You have every man and woman here willing to be yours for a day, you bitch."

Yeah, always only for a day huh? ...

Almost as soon as the words left her mouth, a wrinkled, grey-haired man Shizuru recognized from the teahouse that day stopped nearby and gave her a wink. "See what I mean!" Haruka burst out laughing as Shizuru shivered in revulsion.

She brought her arm up from where it had been clutching her stomach in laughter, and shielded her eyes from the sun. "I don't know about you, but I'm staying right here. Gotta work on my tan."

"Fine, I'm going to go then. But don't worry you'll have your turn with me," Shizuru teased sarcastically.

"Get your arrogant ass the fuck out of here! You're blocking my sun!" Haruka blurted.

Shizuru smiled and scampered away as her friend brushed up a handful of sand at her feet, heading in the direction of the pier. She figured she would go see what the boys were up to anyways.

x

The boardwalk was packed with people. Even still it wasn't hard to spot her ex boyfriend and his best friend. Just look for the crowd, she had told herself. Sure enough, they were both standing off to the side of the ferris wheel, getting ready to put on a show.

.tbc.

**[A/N: Slow and easy does it. How can I possibly have writer's block already? Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.]**


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